Two out of three test results

Test result sent as email yesterday at 7pm

This just in: At 6:09 pm today, the State of Wisconsin rang my home telephone number with my COVID-19 test results from the test I received from the National Guard this past Thursday (3 days ago).

The results are: NEGATIVE

So, I don't know what I have, but I am STILL going to be cautious until I feel better, and will try not to spread it to anyone!

(One down, two to go - I still have tests pending from CVS and from Aurora Healthcare).

Mid July 2020 waiting for COVID-19 test results

Well, I was going to put this on FACEBOOK, but I don't usually write such wordy things on there, so I thought I would write it here and link it from there.

I have a job in the tech industry, maintaining order processing systems for a large family owned business, and have been able  to work from home, since early in March of this year 2020, when the COVID-19 Pandemic "officially" started.

I have been careful to social distance, and to wear the best face covering I could come up with since the beginning.  A friend early one brought me an N95 respirator, and I was able to score 8 more of them as a perk for buying some stereo equipment.

I had played it safe for four months, even using the washer and dryer in my apartment building's basement instead of my usual weekly trek to the laundromat.  One day I did three loads, which took about four hours, up and down.  This was driven by pure necessity, because I had run out of the unmentionable necessities, although I never got fully dressed most days.

Anyway, the laundry piled up mostly undone, and, just as restrictions began to be relaxed, I ventured out to a laundromat.

I picked a bigger one than I usually went to, reasoning that the bigger aisles would be safer.

I went there wearing an unused N95 respirator from my small stash.

Long story short, I did nine loads in just under two hours, washing and drying, and didn't get very close to anyone, masked or not, for very long during that time, so I thought I had taken reasonable precautions to save many hours of effort doing the same thing at home and had incurred a minimal risk.

That was last Sunday afternoon.

Then, late on Wednesday, I started to feel a little bit off.

Thursday morning, I knew I had come down with something like a cold, with no fever, but a headache and a feeling of tiredness, so I called in sick at work, requesting PTO for the day.

I looked online for places to get tested, and, surprisingly, found several.  I picked three.

First was at a CVS pharmacy in Lindenhurst, IL.  I drove there and, following detailed directions, stuck the tiny swab up my nose.  They said they were backed up running the tests so it was expected to take two weeks to get results.

That afternoon, I went to University of Wisconsin, Parkside, and get the same treatment from the National Guard.  They didn't say, but, having tested with them before, I had gotten results in two days.

The third one was through my healthcare provider, Aurora Medical Center.  Soonest I could schedule was Saturday, and I went there late morning.  This was a slightly different swab, fatter, and didn't go as deep. They say expect results in three to seven days.

So, here I am, having felt 'punk' for three solid days, but not seriously ill, waiting for tests, and committing to quarantining myself - where I used to go for carry out, I will now substitute contact free delivery.  I signed up to have groceries delivered instead of making my usual "Chernobyl style" run through Woodmans Market. (see https://www.elenafilatova.net/ - yes, I know it was dramatized for sensationality - still a cultural point of reference wikipedia says: "In 2004, photographer Elena Filatova published a photo-essay on her website of her solo motorcycle rides through Pripyat and the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.^[11] The solo motorcycle ride story was later revealed to be a hoax; most of the photos had been taken during a guided tour.^[12]")

I remember being afraid to even do that, but, apparently, time and experienced dulled the fear.

I came to believe that eventually I would get COVID, just because it is becoming so diffused throughout the country and especially my state, but continued to hope that it would wait until they had a cure or at least better treatments.

Now may be the time!

I am so glad my symptoms are not worse!

I am seventy two years of age, and in reasonable health, aside from "benign hypertension" which is under control of a beta blocker and an ACE inhibitor.  I have been taking a vitamin D supplement for many years, and have been used to having my annual cold, requiring me to take a couple of days off work.

I will be very happy to go back to 'safer at home' with the occasional carry-out run to better support the local restaurants who get hit with lowered margins from using GRUBHUB and DOORDASH, as soon as I get back to feeling 'normal'.

Naturally, I will post the results when I get them!

Joss Whedon's Dollhouse

I had hardly watched television at all in the last decade.

Nothing on TV interested me, except the occasional episode of SNL with Christopher Walken. Or, maybe, I would tune in for Headlines on Leno's show, especially if he was doing weddings ("The Hardin/Johnson nuptials", etc.)

A few years ago, some internet chatter about the movie SERENITY got me out to a nearby multiplex, and I really liked the movie.

So I followed up by bit-torrenting the 4-CD set of the Fox television series Firefly, and, without going into fawning detail appropriate to some fanboy site, let's just say that I became such a fan that I acquired a sanctioned copy of the afore alluded boxed set, just because I thought the packaging was so cool! I became such a 'browncoat" that I sought out several of the comic books that fill in gaps in the Firefly chronology.

I idly thought about maybe someday getting Buffy-the-Vampire-Slayer or Angel on DVD.

But then, someone posted in Salon about a new Wheedon series, Dollhouse, and I thought about tuning in.

Well, last Friday, I did.

It was episode 4, "Gray Hour", and I found myself sucked in!

The last time this had happened, it was "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman". Yep, that was more than thirty years ago!

And it isn't just Eliza Dushku, although she is, obviously, the star of the show.

It's because of what the show is: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind meets Mission Impossible, then forms a wicked menage a quatre with the Matrix and Memento!

Check it out! It's on Fox, Friday nights at 9 Eastern, 8 Central. Set your DVR or TiVo!

(You can catch up, like I did, on missed episodes, at hulu!)

Latin America News Review: The New York Times screwed up (and I took their bait)

Latin America News Review: The New York Times screwed up (and I took their bait)

You remember what a laugh we had when Hugo Chavez held up Chomsky's book at the UN and said he wished he could have met him before he died?!? Well, it wasn't true!

Do we still need to be reminded NOT to believe everything we read?

Sixteen Tons!

"You load sixteen tons, and waddaya get? Another day older and deeper in debt! St. Peter dontcha call me 'cos I can't go: I owe my soul to the company Sto'!"

So, gee, it's been nearly a year since I last posted here.

I was going to title it "Yet another shoe dropping", but, I dunno, I guess I got tired of that brand.

Oh, yeah, why the title? Thanks for asking! Well, after all this time, I am on the verge of GETTING OUT OF DEBT! I have been on a program for the last six years or so to pay off my credit card balances - at one time up to $33K! - I have already paid off two of them, with three to go. Two of them will be done end of December, and the last one in January! HAPPY NEW YEAR! :cheesygrin:

Turns out Peter DOES have epilepsy all along, as a COMPETENT medical observer could have told two years ago. What looked to me like a grand mal seizure the morning of the Malaysian Tsunami was just that!

Oh, the clonazepam did actually dampen out the electrical activity, but it's not a drug one can use long-term.

The turning point in this saga came one morning as I was saving, running late getting to work, and the phone rang. It was Peter's friend Liz telling me that she had called 911 because she found Peter had fallen in their bathtub. I wish that she had called me FIRST, because there was no point in ANOTHER expensive visit to the emergency room, but the die was cast, so to speak.

Anyway, what made this a turning point was that, later, Peter told me that he REMEMBERED fallling! Ergo, he was NOT sleepwalking when the attack occurred!

Ah, yes, the steeltrap mind snaps shut!

So, now that we have insurance, I go and look for a nearby Neurologist that is in my PPO.

Long story short, after her tests, the diagnosis is crystal clear: Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy.

The "Sleep Doctor", with his M.D. and Ph.D. I now regard as a "quack".

Still, my being misled was partly my own damn fault - I didn't want to THINK he had epilepsy, so I found a way NOT to for a while.

Anyway, the rather expensive non-generic medication seems to work just fine, with no noticeable side effects, and MOST of the time Peter takes them as directed, although not without some urging on my part.

Who knows. Maybe it's a good thing: If they reinstitute the draft, they might not take him becasue of this lifelong chronic incurable condition!

Can you wait for the dust to settle?

Yeah, well, neither can I!

I wanted this post to be titled "The other shoe dropping", but as a general theme here, it just doesn't work very well.

Yeah, I did find out why the yellow lead was dead: blown fuse! More than likely, I was the author of my own misfortune, charging in to rewire the circuit and casually grounding the yellow wire.

The other stuff: well, I have mixed results!

One bright spot: I found, strangely enough, that my old AOL homepage is still there!

I don't know how much bandwidth it supports, but IT STILL HAS THE EMBEDDED AUDIO OF MARK FISHER READING THE PUB!

Here's the link: Taoists are Lao-Tse Lovers

As soon as it loads, if your sound card is on, you should hear Mark reading the poem.

This is some kind of positive outcome, if not exactly a resolution.

In other news, there's a more mixed outcome.

I had thought I was going to write here that we had solved the problem of Peter's sleepwalking, and particularly, his falling down in the bathroom, but alas it is more "nuanced" than that. For two whole months, he had had not episodes, and he had been taking the medicine the sleep specialist had prescribed, Clonazepam (first cousin to Diazepam, aka "Valium"), but I had not been sure that it was the pill, or if there was some "placebo" effect going on. Well, he had an episode, and it came out that he had stopped taking the pill for four days. "Well", I thought. "That settle it!", and I encouraged him to go back on the pill.

Sounded pretty good, but then, not long after, he had an episode even WHILE taking the pill! Even worse, it had happened much earlier in the night than it had ever happened before!

Well, back we went to the sleep specialist.

Long story short, he is now taking ANOTHER pill in addition. This one is called "Requip" - indicated for "Restless Leg Syndrome" and for Parkinson's!

Possibly the brightest news is that the doctor has assured me that the thrashing I had observed to occur always after he had fallen was NOT epilepsy, but merely a "parasomnia", sometimes called "head-banging".

Well, I'll take good news anywhere I can get it.

*Sigh*

"Why Me?"

Is it just me? Or does everyone ask this question when things go wrong.

My ex-wife, Alexis, used to combat feeling sorry for herself with a kind of faux-bravado. She was slowly wasting away from Multiple Sclerosis, and she liked to say that instead of asking "Why Me" she would instead ask "Why NOT me?" Saying this seemed to satisfy her Leonine pride (early August birthday, dontcha know), but she never saw that she contradicted herself when she would confidently declare that she would NEVER end up, like her brother, in a nursing home. (Google +"William DeFotis" +music). He had been diagnosed with MS about the same time she had, but had progressed quite rapidly despite his efforts to stay active. He had been working hard from a manual wheelchair at his full-time job as a music professor at William and Mary, and just collapsed one day into a coma from which he miraculously recovered, but just barely. He was never able to work after that. "Why NOT me" didn't apply to her in that case.

As it worked out, she bypassed the long stay in the nursing home and went to her grave a full year and five days before he did. I *think* she chose dying over wasting away.

One of Robert Heinlein's characters, Max Jones said of the epitaph he had devised for his friend Sergeant Sam Anderson:

• He had considered, "He played the cards he was dealt" but that didn't fit Sam either; if Sam didn't like the cards, he sometimes slipped in a whole new deck.

But I digress.

Today, I finally found time to install my spiffy new in-dash CD/MP3 player, and when I connected all the wires and tried to fire her up, nothing happened! Playing detective, I discovered that the yellow wire that was supposed to bring +12V 24/7 was dead. Curious, because it had always worked before for the CD player I was replacing. With some trepidation, I wired the yellow lead to the red one and, Voila! She works! Except now she forgets all her settings every time you turn off the ignition!

Peculiar!

Why would the yellow lead break just then?!?

Well, maybe it was a weak connection to begin with, and my moving the wiring around made it finally give up the ghost!

But still, I ask myself, is it FAIR? Now, every time I get out of the car, the player forgets which of the 100 MP3 tracks it was playing and starts over from track one. So I am going to have to punch the Track plus key (or the Track minus key) up to fifty times to get back where I was.

On the other hand, when I think of all the poor schlubs in the world that DON'T have Radio Paradise on MP3's in their car, I think I'm pretty darn lucky!

You know, I was orignally going to make this post a long discourse on feeling "Stuck", but Robert Pirsig did so much better at it with his book "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" so I should just insert a link to that book in Amazon.com!

Or, in the words of the immortal Deteriorata:

"Take heart amid the deepening gloom that your dog is finally getting enough cheese; and reflect that whatever misfortune may be your lot, it could only be worse in Milwaukee".

PS - you think the RED lead is thinking "Why not me"?!?